As a good Catholic, I'll be at Mass on Sunday. As a rabid Eagles fan, I'll also make a visit to the pews Saturday, a few hours before game time.

I am a child of the 70s. If you look at the email address at the end of this op-Ed, you can figure out my age (and if you are particularly ill-disposed, can probably engage in identity theft.) Having lived in Pennsylvania since shortly after my birth, I experienced some true glory years of football.

Unfortunately, they were someone else’s glory years, namely, the Pittsburgh Steelers. I am not a fan of the Steelers. It has very little to do with scruffy Ben Roethlesberg or the fact that Heinz Ward tripped the light fantastic on Dancing With The Stars (football players really need to stop that nonsense, now.)

My problem with what is, according to a recent poll, Pennsylvania’s favorite team dates back to my teen years when it seemed that every season while my beloved benighted Birds were struggling to climb out of a below 500 hole, the cross-state cousins were racking up Superbowl victories.

It killed me to watch an NFL films segment with John Facenda (a Philly boy who had no business making nice with the enemy) waxing poetic about the Immaculate Reception.

Through it all, I was a season ticket-holder. I trudged to the Vet with my Kelly Green regalia, not caring that while the Bald Eagle was making a comeback, my Eagles were on the endangered special teams list.

It is indicative of the Philadelphia spirit that you root for your team regardless of how well, or ill, they are doing. It is part of your DNA, as immutable and essential as that inability to properly pronounce a dipthong.

Then, something happened. We started getting better. We acquired a college coach with four letters in his first name, who whipped us into shape and brought us to the gates of the Promised Land.

Dick Vermeil didn’t get us to the top of the mountain, but he made the journey much easier than it had been lo those many lost seasons. Suddenly, those ugly yellow towels didn’t seem so terrible anymore.

Since we lost the great Vermeil to first retirement and then another professional team that shall remain nameless, we’ve had some good seasons and some bad ones. We had a very passionate relationship with a fellow named Andy and even though that didn’t work out, the divorce was amicable.

Now, we have another college coach with four letters in his first name, giving us directions to the Promised Land. It is, perhaps, too soon to make predictions, but we see the gates in the distance.

That is what it means to be a season ticket-holder on the disfavored side of a storied football state. We don’t expect victory, as they always did (and probably still do) in Steelers Nation. We don’t even expect to be the Phoenix that rises from the ashes, as they obviously do along the Allegheny.

Philadelphia fans expect our hearts to be broken. But there is that small, flicker of hope each time we see a warrior whose name has some variation of “Sean” in it, dancing in the end zone. We live for miracles, like the ones that regularly happen in the swamp on the northern end of I-95.

As a good Catholic, I’ll be at Mass on Sunday. As a rabid Eagles fan, I’ll also make a visit to the pews Saturday, a few hours before game time. Miracles still happen, after all.

Christine M. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News. As this piece suggests, she is a long-suffering Philadelphia Eagles fan. Readers may e-mail her at cflowers1961@gmail.com.